The Persia Cafe

by Melany Neilson

Book Overview

Growing up in a small Mississippi River town, Fannie Leary works at the local cafe, trying to hold her own in a world of slow expectations and hard boundaries. Dreaming that her cooking will be her ticket out of Persia, she cleaves to Mattie, the irrepressible black woman who runs the kitchen; to Will, the troubled, quiet boy she falls in love with; and eventually to Sheila Jones, a reclusive young girl who has returned with her mother from California...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312289162
• ISBN13: 9780312289164
• Release Date: February 2002
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

deft recounting of female friendship during racist era

Taut, languid and ominous, Melany Neilson's "The Persia Cafe" is a remarkable debut novel. Treating the theme of interracial friendship during the formative years of the civil rights movement, "Cafe" explores the corrosive impact of racism through the evolving relationship between two honorable, frustrated women. Uncommonly understated, Ms. Neilson's writing compels the reader to construct detail, both in the evolution of the plot and the impact of events on the two protagonists. The novel builds an almost unbearable tension as the reader struggles with such issues as constructing authentic relationships in a social milieu which limits and punishes their creation, the limits and consequences of knowledge, personal and social respnsibility for acts of violence, passion and betrayal, secrecy and its impact on how people respond to each other. Shackled by societal restrictions, frustrated by personal disappointments and angered by repressed ambitions, the evolving relationship between Fannie and Mattie becomes the central focus of the novel. Fannie, aware of her heritage as the illegitimate daughter of the town's seamstress, yearns to escape the suffocating constraints of Persia, Mississippi, which in 1962, epitomizes southern rural racism. Fannie's personal alienation and harnessed hopes for freedom channel her into the kitchen, where she learns of her culinary gift. In her hands, food becomes transformed into art. Yet, this same burning drive for experience that elicits creative talent leads her into an ill-conceived and fractious marriage.While in the kitchen of the Persia Cafe, Fannie encounters a defiant, proud black cook, Mattie. Nursing her own anguish and smoldering resentments at a society which binds her to subservience, Mattie slowly, reluctantly, suspiciously develops a relationship with Fannie. Mattie is a defiant woman who often speaks in cryptic half sentences; she ponders if Fannie's personal frustrations could lead to a biracial understanding. Mattie evolves as a central figure; her personal, unspoken knowledge of the details of a racist murder alternately draws and repels Fannie, who is laboring with her own burdens of knowledge -- of a failed marriage, of derivative responsibility for racial violence, of her own shanmbles of a life."The Persia Cafe" contains exquisite descriptions of the physical nature of rural, river life in 1960s Mississippi. Sweltering heat, earthy smells, the sounds of insects and the river during a summer night capture the reader's imagination. Ms. Neilson tantalizes us with her exploration of things unbridgeable: relationships between the races, the shattering of a marriage by a husband's betrayal, the wonder if what we know is actual or imagined. Persia's racism is ever-present, looming and casting its shadow everywhere; physical violence receives an ugly complement in psychological terror and threat. Mattie and Fannie's friendship is all the more remarkable given its improbability and inh

Eudora Welty was right

Eudora Welty was right when she said Melany Neilson's writing is a cause for exhiliration. The Persia Cafe is a literary thriller! It is an exciting murder mystery and much more. Melany Neilson has painted a wonderful portrait of life--the sights, sounds, smells and tastes--in small town Mississippi in the early 1960s. But, most of all, The Persia Cafe is the story of an unlikely friendship. You will care about Fannie and Mattie. You won't want to put the book down until you find out what happens to them and to their friendship.

Another fine Southern writer

What is it about the South that evokes such powerful stories? Melany Neilson is a very talented writer, but I think even she would have to admit that living in the South offers so much to authors, that all they have to do is pay attention. Although Persia, Mississippi is fictional, it really isn't. It is every small town in Mississippi that I have ever been through. Having lived in Mississippi all my life, Persia just makes sense. I know those people. I have been in that cafe. I have stood on the banks of that river. And although I think that many things have changed for the better, I have also seen those looks on faces, both white and black. I have, at times, sensed the tension and distrust among people who have shared this geography for years and years.The wonderful thing about this novel, however, is that the reader doesn't have to be from The South to appreciate the rich language and beautiful images. You can smell the fried chicken and biscuits whether you're in Jackson, Mississippi or Jackson Hole, Wyoming. You care about these people, wherever you happen to fall in relation to the Mason-Dixon line.I love Southern writers. I think that they are special, and offer something to the world of literature that nobody else can. Hats off to Melany Neilson. You were fair, and honest, and respectful in your attempt.

Persia Cafe

As an involuntary exile from the South, I am on constant lookout for stories from home. Persia Cafe must have whispered to me as I entered the bookstore in Tulsa this weekend; I turned to a bookshelf and there it was. To be clear, I have not finished the book. My five-star rating is for the opening chapter, which I read standing in the front door of Steve's Books. The voice is fresh, the opening original, the storyline compelling. The book passes all the measures of a grat story: Already, I care about the heroine; I want to know what happens in the story. I will find out.